February 19

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , , ,

GUEST CURATOR:  Michael “OB” O’Brien

What was advertised in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago today?

Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet (February 19, 1776).

“Rattinets and buttons; shalloons and durants.”

When I first examined George Bartram’s advertisement in the Pennsylvania Packet on February 19, 1776, I noticed how crowded it was with imported fabrics and fashionable goods. Bartram listed “New fashioned jacket patterns,” a “general assortment of mens, womens, boys and girls ribbed and plain worsted stockings,” silk gloves, and numerous types of cloth (such as rattinets, shalloons, and durants), all meant to appeal to customers looking for style and choice. His shop offered more than just the necessities. He encouraged customers to browse, compare, and imagine new possibilities of how they might dress. In The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, T.H. Breen states that “as the index of choice expanded, so too the dreams of possession flourished.”[1]  Bartram’s advertisement reflected exactly that expanding world of choice. The abundance of fabrics and fashionable goods available in his Philadelphia shop shows how deeply colonists participated in the marketplace even on the brink of the American Revolution.

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ADDITIONAL COMMENTARY:  Carl Robert Keyes

Nearly a year after George Bartram announced in the Pennsylvania Evening Post that he “resolved to decline his Retail Trade,” he once again ran an advertisement about “SELLING OFF” the inventory at his “Woollen Drapery and Hosiery Ware-house” in Philadelphia.  He offered his wares “wholesale and retail,” indicating that he had neither gone out of business nor became a merchant who dealt solely in wholesale transactions.  As Michael notes, Bartram stocked a wide array of imported goods.  He conveniently did not mention whether his merchandise arrived in Philadelphia before the Continental Association went into effect.

By the time he ran his advertisement in February 1776, Bartram’s warehouse on Second Street between Chestnut Street and Walnut Street was a landmark familiar to residents of Philadelphia.  In 1767, he opened his “new Shop at the Sign of the Naked Boy.”  His advertisements in the Pennsylvania Chronicle featured a woodcut depicting that sign.  In a cartouche in the center, a naked boy unfurled a length of fabric.  Bolts of textile flanked the cartouche with Bartram’s name appearing beneath them.  Replicating his shop sign in the public prints likely improved Bartram’s visibility in the busy port city.  He continued publishing advertisements with that image for several years.

Yet Bartram eventually abandoned the device that marked his location for so long in favor of rebranding his store as “GEORGE BARTRAM’s WOOLLEN DRAPERY AND HOSIERY WARE-HOUSE, At the Sign of the GOLDEN FLEECE’S HEAD,” though he remained at the same location on Second Street.  His new advertisements sometimes featured a woodcut depicting his new device, though on other occasions he opted for no decorative elements or a border comprised of printing ornaments rather than the image of “the Sign of the GOLDEN FLEECE’S HEAD.”  His advertisements did not reveal why he opted for a new sign to mark his location and identify his business.

In subsequent advertisements, Bartram proclaimed that he was “SELLING OFF” his inventory and leaving the “Retail Trade.”  He made such pronouncements in March 1775 and September 1775, though in the latter he clarified that he would cease retail operations “so soon as the trade is open between Britain and America.”  Once the war that started in April 1775 became a revolution, the resumption of trade became even more uncertain.  For the moment, Bartram continued “SEELING OFF” his inventory “at the most reasonable rates,” making him a precursor to modern businesses that constantly promote sales to draw customers.  The marketing tried to create a sense of urgency by suggesting a limited-time offer, yet savvy consumers likely realized that one sale followed another at Bartram’s “Woollen Drapery and Hosiery Ware-house.”

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[1] T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 58.

Slavery Advertisements Published February 19, 1776

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

The Slavery Adverts 250 Project chronicles the role of newspaper advertising in perpetuating slavery in the era of the American Revolution. The project seeks to reveal the ubiquity of slavery in eighteenth-century life from New England to Georgia by republishing advertisements about enslaved people – for sale as individuals or in groups, wanted to purchase or for hire for short periods, runaways who liberated themselves, and those who were subsequently captured and confined in jails and workhouses – in daily digests on this site as well as in real time via the @SlaveAdverts250 Twitter feed, utilizing twenty-first-century media to stand in for the print media of the eighteenth century.

The project aims to provide modern audiences with a sense of just how often colonizers encountered these advertisements in their daily lives. Enslaved men, women, and children appeared in print somewhere in the colonies almost every single day. Those advertisements served as a constant backdrop for social, cultural, economic, and political life in colonial and revolutionary America. Colonizers who did not purport to own enslaved people were still confronted with slavery as well as invited to maintain the system by purchasing enslaved men, women, and children or assisting in the capture of so-called “runaways” who sought to free themselves from bondage. The frequency of these newspaper advertisements suggests just how embedded slavery was in colonial and revolutionary American culture in everyday interactions beyond the printed page.

These advertisements also testify to the experiences of enslaved men, women, and children, though readers must consider that those experiences have been remediated through descriptions offered by enslavers rather than enslaved people themselves. Often unnamed in the advertisements, enslaved men, women, and children were not invisible or unimportant in early America.

Massimo Sgambati made significant contributions to this entry as part of the Summer Scholars Program, funded by a fellowship from the D’Amour College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Assumption University in Worcester, Massachusetts, in Summer 2025.

These advertisements appeared in revolutionary American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet (February 19, 1776).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (February 19, 1776).

Advertisements for Common Sense Published February 19, 1776

Carl Robert Keyes Special Features

Historians consider Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, published anonymously on January 9, 1776, the most influential political pamphlet that circulated in the colonies during the era of the American Revolution.  Written in plain language accessible to readers of all backgrounds, the pamphlet made a bold case for declaring independence at a time that many colonizers still sought a redress their grievances by George III and Parliament.  Paine’s pamphlet played a vital role in swaying public opinion in favor of declaring independence.

Common Sense was an eighteenth-century bestseller, though Paine wildly overestimated how many copies were published, claiming 150,000 circulated in 1776, and historians later made even more dubious claims that American printing presses produced as many as 500,000 copies.  Contrary to those exaggerations, American printers most likely published between 35,000 and 50,000 copies in 1776.  Scholars have identified twenty-five American editions, more than twice as many as any other American book or pamphlet published in the eighteenth century.

Colonizers certainly discussed Paine’s pamphlet … and printers, booksellers, and others advertised it widely.  As a special feature, the Adverts 250 Project chronicles those advertisements, starting with newspaper notices for Robert Bell’s first edition published in Philadelphia and then subsequent advertisements for that and other editions published and sold throughout the colonies.

These advertisements for Common Sense appeared in American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Connecticut Courant (February 19, 1778).

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Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet (February 19, 1776).

February 18

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , , , , , ,

What was advertised in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago this week?

New-York Journal (February 15, 1776).

“A NEW and CORRECT EDITION … of that justly esteemed PAMPHLET, called COMMON SENSE.”

A month after Robert Bell published the first edition of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense in Philadelphia on January 9, 1776, readers of the New-York Journal certainly knew about the pamphlet, even if they had not read it or heard much about its contents.  Just reading the newspaper would have been enough to get a sense of the pamphlet’s popularity.  After all, the February 15 edition of the New-York Journal carried four advertisements for Common Sense!

Some of them would have looked familiar to regular readers of that newspaper.  William Green, a bookbinder in Maiden Lane and Bell’s agent in New York, once again advertised the unauthorized “Second Edition of COMMON SENSE” that Bell published in Philadelphia.  It was the third consecutive week his notice ran in the New-York Journal.  Also appearing for the third time, another advertisement informed readers that William Bradford and Thomas Bradford would soon publish a “NEW EDITION, (with LARGE and INTERESTING ADDITIONS …) OF COMMON SENSE,” an edition undertaken “by appointment of the Author.”  After a falling out with Bell, Paine approached the printers of the Pennsylvania Journal to publish a new edition.  The Bradfords set about advertising that expanded edition in both Philadelphia and New York.

A variation of one of the other advertisements ran in the previous issue of the New-York Journal.  In it, John Anderson, the printer of the Constitutional Gazette, announced publication of a local edition of “that justly esteemed PAMPHLET, called COMMON SENSE.”  The previous version ended with the title of the pamphlet.  The new one included two elements often included in other advertisements for Common Sense: the section headings that outlined the contents and an epigraph from “Liberty,” a poem by James Thomson.  The addition material in Anderson’s advertisement may have helped draw attention to it …

… but the final advertisement dwarfed all the others.  For the first time, Bell advertised directly in the New-York Journal rather than indirectly through Green.  In doing so, he transferred to New York the feud that he and Paine had waged in advertisements in the Pennsylvania Evening Post and other newspapers published in Philadelphia.  Compared to the Bradfords’ new edition “In the PRESS, and will be published as soon as possible,” Bell’s unauthorized second edition was “Out of the Press” and on sale.  His notice included the section headers and epigraph by Thomson as well as an address “To the PUBLIC” that first appeared in the Pennsylvania Evening Post on January 27 and an even longer diatribe “To Mr. ANONYMOUS” that first appeared in the Pennsylvania Evening Post on February 1.  While the Bradfords’ advertisement hinted at discord between Bell and Paine, this advertisement put the argument on full display for readers in New York.  Perhaps that helped generate interest in the pamphlet.  For readers who had not yet perused Common Sense themselves, those four advertisements may have encouraged them to acquire a copy to find out more about all the hullabaloo.

February 17

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , , ,

What was advertised in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago today?

Providence Gazette (February 17, 1776).

“This Pamphlet is in such very great Demand, that … three Editions of it have been printed in Philadelphia.”

On February 17, 1776, John Carter, the printer of the Providence Gazette, became the first printer in New England to announce plans to publish a local edition of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense.  “Now in the PRESS,” he proclaimed, “And on Thursday next will be Published … Common Sense: Addressed to the INHABITANTS of AMERICA, on the following interesting Subjects.”  Carter then listed the titles of the sections of the political pamphlet, replicating many of the advertisements that previously ran in newspapers published in Philadelphia and New York.  He even included the epigraph from “Liberty,” a poem by James Thomson, that appeared on the first page of the first edition published by Robert Bell and in many of Bell’s advertisements for the pamphlet.

Carter disseminated this advertisement on a Saturday, but readers had to wait until the following Thursday for the pamphlet to go on sale.  To stoke anticipation even more, he reported, “This Pamphlet is in such very great Demand, that in the Course of a few Weeks three Editions of it have been printed in Philadelphia, and two in New-York, besides a German Edition.”  Indeed, Bell first advertised Common Sense on January 9 and soon after advertised an unauthorized second edition.  Unhappy with Bell’s failure to earn a profit on the first edition, Paine turned to William Bradford and Thomas Bradford to publish a new edition with additional content.  Before its publication on February 14, Bell and Paine engaged in bitter exchanges in advertisements in the Pennsylvania Evening Post and other newspapers.  In their advertisement, the Bradfords also indicated that a “German edition is likewise in the press.”  Meanwhile, John Anderson advertised his local edition, the first printed in New York, on February 7.  Even if readers of the Providence Gazette had not previously heard much about Paine’s incendiary political pamphlet, Carter intended for its popularity in Philadelphia and New York to encourage sales of his local edition.  He clearly intended for retailers to purchase it to sell again, offering a discount of “One Shilling single, or Eight Shillings per Dozen.”  Perhaps he expected that supporters of the American cause would also purchase by the dozen and distribute them to friends and relations.  Allowing such a steep discount likely helped the pamphlet achieve even greater circulation.

Slavery Advertisements Published February 17, 1776

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

The Slavery Adverts 250 Project chronicles the role of newspaper advertising in perpetuating slavery in the era of the American Revolution. The project seeks to reveal the ubiquity of slavery in eighteenth-century life from New England to Georgia by republishing advertisements about enslaved people – for sale as individuals or in groups, wanted to purchase or for hire for short periods, runaways who liberated themselves, and those who were subsequently captured and confined in jails and workhouses – in daily digests on this site as well as in real time via the @SlaveAdverts250 Twitter feed, utilizing twenty-first-century media to stand in for the print media of the eighteenth century.

The project aims to provide modern audiences with a sense of just how often colonizers encountered these advertisements in their daily lives. Enslaved men, women, and children appeared in print somewhere in the colonies almost every single day. Those advertisements served as a constant backdrop for social, cultural, economic, and political life in colonial and revolutionary America. Colonizers who did not purport to own enslaved people were still confronted with slavery as well as invited to maintain the system by purchasing enslaved men, women, and children or assisting in the capture of so-called “runaways” who sought to free themselves from bondage. The frequency of these newspaper advertisements suggests just how embedded slavery was in colonial and revolutionary American culture in everyday interactions beyond the printed page.

These advertisements also testify to the experiences of enslaved men, women, and children, though readers must consider that those experiences have been remediated through descriptions offered by enslavers rather than enslaved people themselves. Often unnamed in the advertisements, enslaved men, women, and children were not invisible or unimportant in early America.

Massimo Sgambati made significant contributions to this entry as part of the Summer Scholars Program, funded by a fellowship from the D’Amour College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Assumption University in Worcester, Massachusetts, in Summer 2025.

These advertisements appeared in revolutionary American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (February 17, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (February 17, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (February 17, 1776).

Advertisements for Common Sense Published February 17, 1776

Carl Robert Keyes Special Features

Historians consider Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, published anonymously on January 9, 1776, the most influential political pamphlet that circulated in the colonies during the era of the American Revolution.  Written in plain language accessible to readers of all backgrounds, the pamphlet made a bold case for declaring independence at a time that many colonizers still sought a redress their grievances by George III and Parliament.  Paine’s pamphlet played a vital role in swaying public opinion in favor of declaring independence.

Common Sense was an eighteenth-century bestseller, though Paine wildly overestimated how many copies were published, claiming 150,000 circulated in 1776, and historians later made even more dubious claims that American printing presses produced as many as 500,000 copies.  Contrary to those exaggerations, American printers most likely published between 35,000 and 50,000 copies in 1776.  Scholars have identified twenty-five American editions, more than twice as many as any other American book or pamphlet published in the eighteenth century.

Colonizers certainly discussed Paine’s pamphlet … and printers, booksellers, and others advertised it widely.  As a special feature, the Adverts 250 Project chronicles those advertisements, starting with newspaper notices for Robert Bell’s first edition published in Philadelphia and then subsequent advertisements for that and other editions published and sold throughout the colonies.

These advertisements for Common Sense appeared in American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Constitutional Gazette (February 17, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Evening Post (February 17, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Evening Post (February 17, 1776).

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Providence Gazette (February 17, 1776).

February 16

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

What was advertised in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago today?

Thomas’s Massachusetts Spy (February 16, 1776).

“An ORATION will be delivered … to commemorate the horrid Massacre perpetrated in Boston.”

It was an annual tradition that commenced the year after the Boston Massacre.  The residents of the town gathered for an oration that commemorated the event.  James Lovell spoke in 1771, Joseph Warren in 1772, Benjamin Church in 1773, and John Hancock in 1774.  Joseph Warren once again delivered the oration in 1775, about six weeks before the imperial crisis became an armed conflict at the battles at Lexington and Concord and just three months before Warren, a major general in the colony’s militia, was killed during the Battle of Bunker Hill.  As the siege of Boston continued in 1776, the tradition continued, though in Watertown where the Massachusetts Provincial Congress met rather than in occupied Boston

About three weeks in advance, Thomas’ Massachusetts Spy, which had relocated to Worcester from Boston just as hostilities commenced, carried a notice for the “freeholders and other inhabitants who were inhabitants of Boston, in March last.”  It advised that “agreeable to their vote in a town-meeting legally assembled on the 5th of said month,” the fifth anniversary of the Boston Massacre, “an ORATION will be delivered at the meeting-house, in Watertown, on the 5th of March next … to commemorate the horrid Massacre perpetrated in Boston … by a party of Soldiers of the 29th Regiment, under the command of Capt. Thomas Preston.”  As usual, the oration would not merely honor those who died when British soldiers fired into a crowd of protestors; the speaker would also “impress upon our minds the ruinous tendency of Standing armies being placed in large and populous cities, in time of peace.”  The presence of British soldiers in Boston led to what colonizers often called the “bloody Tragedy.”  The oration was also a call to action, asserting “the necessity of such exertions as the inhabitants of Boston then manifested, whereby the designs of the conspirators against the public safety, have been frustrated.”  The annual gathering had even greater significance now that colonizers were fighting a war against British troops and many of them increasingly contemplated declaring independence rather than seeking redress of their grievances within the imperial system.  With an advertisement in the public prints, the organizers hoped to draw crowds for the oration and, in turn, strengthen the resolve of those who attended.

Slavery Advertisements Published February 16, 1776

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

The Slavery Adverts 250 Project chronicles the role of newspaper advertising in perpetuating slavery in the era of the American Revolution. The project seeks to reveal the ubiquity of slavery in eighteenth-century life from New England to Georgia by republishing advertisements about enslaved people – for sale as individuals or in groups, wanted to purchase or for hire for short periods, runaways who liberated themselves, and those who were subsequently captured and confined in jails and workhouses – in daily digests on this site as well as in real time via the @SlaveAdverts250 Twitter feed, utilizing twenty-first-century media to stand in for the print media of the eighteenth century.

The project aims to provide modern audiences with a sense of just how often colonizers encountered these advertisements in their daily lives. Enslaved men, women, and children appeared in print somewhere in the colonies almost every single day. Those advertisements served as a constant backdrop for social, cultural, economic, and political life in colonial and revolutionary America. Colonizers who did not purport to own enslaved people were still confronted with slavery as well as invited to maintain the system by purchasing enslaved men, women, and children or assisting in the capture of so-called “runaways” who sought to free themselves from bondage. The frequency of these newspaper advertisements suggests just how embedded slavery was in colonial and revolutionary American culture in everyday interactions beyond the printed page.

These advertisements also testify to the experiences of enslaved men, women, and children, though readers must consider that those experiences have been remediated through descriptions offered by enslavers rather than enslaved people themselves. Often unnamed in the advertisements, enslaved men, women, and children were not invisible or unimportant in early America.

Massimo Sgambati made significant contributions to this entry as part of the Summer Scholars Program, funded by a fellowship from the D’Amour College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Assumption University in Worcester, Massachusetts, in Summer 2025.

These advertisements appeared in revolutionary American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (February 16, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (February 16, 1776).

February 15

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

What was advertised in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago today?

New-York Journal (February 15, 1776).

“When the Association was once and upon a sudden offered to me to sign, I declined signing it.”

Joseph Lyon, a farmer “living at the White Plains in Westchester County” in New York, wanted to get back into the good graces of his community.  He had offended many people when he refused to sign “the Association,” most likely the “General Association, agreed to, and subscribed by the Freeholders, Freemen, and Inhabitants” of New York.  The New York Provincial Congress devised the General Association upon learning of the battles at Lexington and Concord in April 1775.  Delegates then disseminated the General Association throughout the colony, expecting supporters of the American cause to sign it.  In doing so, subscribers pledged to “adopt and endeavour to carry into Execution, whatever Measures may be recommended by the Continental Congress; or resolved upon by our Provincial Convention, for the Purpose of preserving our Constitution, and opposing he Execution of the several arbitrary, and oppressive Acts of the British Parliament; until a Reconciliation between Great-Britain and America, on Constitutional Principles … can be obtained.”

Lyon did not sign and apparently others in White Plains made their displeasure with that decision known to him.  The situation eventually prompted the farmer to take out an advertisement in the February 15, 1776, edition of the New-York Journal.  He attempted to explain what caused his error in judgment: “having spent my life in hard labour, and absence from the means of political knowledge, when the Association was once and upon a sudden offered to me to sign, I declined signing it.”  In other words, he did not regularly follow politics, so he did not understand the significance of the General Association when it was first presented to him.  Furthermore, he had not been allowed time to consider the document thrust at him “upon a sudden.”  When colonizers in Massachusetts published advertisements apologizing for signing an address to Thomas Hutchinson when the governor returned to England, many also claimed that they had not had time to consider the implications.  In both instances, those asking forgiveness claimed that events moved too quickly so they should not be faulted for making a poor decision.  Lyon gave the matter “further consideration” and then “applied to the Chairman or one of the Committee for leave to sign” the General Association, but by then “the paper was gone to New-York.”

Since Lyon could not sign his name alongside others on the original document, he resorted to a newspaper advertisement.  “I therefore take this method,” he proclaimed, “to declare, that in my heart I am a sincere friend to the Liberties of America, my native country.”  In addition, “all the worldly comfort I expect for myself and my children, is connected with the happiness of America.”  To demonstrate that point, “I have not done, nor been concerned in any thing in opposition [to] the present measures of America, in defence of its Liberties, nor ever will.”  Although he could not sign the General Association, Lyon made his own pledge to “comply with the recommendations and orders of the Congress and Committees in all things, as far as my conscience will permit.”  He may have hoped that others did not pay too much attention to that caveat.  Lyon concluded by stating that he was “sixty six years of age, and diligently employed in farming and grinding” so he hoped “this will afford full satisfaction to my countrymen.  He asked for sympathy for an old man who knew far more about working a farm and operating a mill than anything involving politics.  Humbling himself in the public prints, Lyon believed, offered a means for restoring his standing in his community.